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Monday, March 15, 2010

An experimental M101 Galaxy

Galaxy in "natural" color. Narrowband channels are mixed to match visible spectrum. Red=80% H-alpha+20% S-II, Green=O-III and Blue=80% O-III+20% H-alpha to compensate otherwise missing H-beta.
Galaxy in HST-palette, Red=S-II, Green=H-a and Blue=O-III

It's a Galaxy season but since my light pollution is so bad, I'm not able to do good broad band imaging, needed for targets like Glaxies.
I made this experiment to see, if it's possible to shoot Glaxy with NB-filters, there is some Broad band luminance used, it's shot with a Hutech light pollution filter.

Kind of interesting to see, how emission areas pop up visually, there was strongish signal in H-a and S-II,
O-III was weaker but there was couple of srong O-III regions, they are seen as Blue in a HST-palette image. There was some very weak O-III signal in a largish area around the Galaxy core, it can barely seen as a Bluish hue in the both images.

Processing work flow:
Image acquisition, MaxiDL v5.07.
Stacked and calibrated in CCDStack.
Deconvolution with a CCDSharp, 30 iterations.
Levels, curves and color combine in PS CS3.
Broadband data is mixed to a narrowband channels in PS.

Telescope, Meade LX200 GPS 12" @ f5
Camera, QHY9 Guiding, SXV-AO @ 10Hz
Image Scale, 0,75 arcseconds/pixel
Exposures,
H-alpha 10x1200s, binned 1x1
S-II 3x1200s binned 2x2
O-III 4x1200s binned 3x3
Luminance,
Hutec LP-filter 6x1200s

Plain narrowband images:

No broad band component, only H-a, S-II and O-III.
 Narrowband channels are mixed to match visible spectrum. Red=80% H-alpha+20% S-II, Green=O-III and Blue=80% O-III+20% H-alpha to compensate otherwise missing H-beta.

No broad band component, only H-a, S-II and O-III.
Galaxy in HST-palette, Red=S-II, Green=H-a and Blue=O-III

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Soul Nebula closeup as an animated 3D

In this blog, there is lots of experimental material. To see my actual astroimages, please, see my Portfolio: http://astroanarchy.zenfolio.com/
Animations are made by creating artificial parallax to an image. Then two images are animated together by using conversion web service, Start3D. There can be some artifacts in images, due the experimental nature of this work! The volumetric models are based on some known facts and an artistic impression.
Please, let the images load for few seconds to see them animated!
Original Image with details can be found HERE



Saturday, March 13, 2010

Soul Nebula closeup





Nebula in natural color. Narrowband channels are mixed to match visible spectrum. Red=80% H-alpha+20% S-II, Green=O-III and Blue=80% O-III+20% H-alpha to compensate otherwise missing H-beta.

Nebula in HST-palette, Red=S-II, Green=H-a and Blue=O-III

The nebula season is kind of over but up here, 65N, it's still very possible to shoot some nebulae.
The Soul nebula, IC 1848, was in western sky at elevation of 55 degrees when I started imaging, at Nine a clock. I took last images at four in a morning, at that time the elevation was about 30 degrees and it was just past the Northern moust point at a sky. Evem though I spen whole night shooting this, poor transparency, speeding clouds and, due previous, lost guidestar, I was able to use only Seven 20min. frames for this.
Color for the final image are taken from my older narrowband image from 2008, the original Blog post can be found here: http://astroanarchy.blogspot.com/2008/10/heart-soul.html

Processing work flow:
Image acquisition, MaxiDL v5.07.
Stacked and calibrated in CCDStack.
Deconvolution with a CCDSharp, 30 iterations.
Levels, curves and color combine in PS CS3.
Broadband data is mixed to a narrowband channels in PS.

Telescope, Meade LX200 GPS 12" @ f5
Camera, QHY9 Guiding, SXV-AO @ 10Hz
Image Scale, 0,75 arcseconds/pixel
Exposures H-alpha 7x1200s, binned 1x1
Note. O-III and S-II are taken from older image of the Soul and Heart nebulae.
Colors are taken from this narrowband, HST-palette, image. Current image is marked with Cyan rectangle.

Soul Nebula closeup as a Stereo pair

Parallel vision
Cross vision
NOTE! This is a personal vision about forms and shapes, based on some known facts and artistic impression. Viewing instructions can be found from a Right hand side menu.
Original Image with details can be found HERE
Much more stereo images can be found HERE

Stereo pairs in a Natural colors

Parallel vision

Cross vision